The author of a study of laptop use in upper-level law school courses summarizes his conclusions.

Yet another student rages against the machine.

A professor at Cal State Fullerton explains his no-laptop policy. You learn when you focus your mind. Pretty obvious.

This professor also complains about… professors.

I’ve been in meetings and watched professors do other things on their laptop, and it is distracting to me. Students are not the only ones who do it.

It’s so rude. You might at least expect professors to know better.

Otherwise, you risk losing your temper.

… if the laptops in college classrooms problem were solved not by professors, but by angry students! I can’t keep up with the editorials in university newspapers calling laptop use rude, outrageous, distracting to others in the room, an intolerable problem. Where are the professors willing to say this?

True, more and more of them, like UD, ban the machines; but the vast majority seems – cynically, lazily, indifferently – to be perfectly okay about mandatory attendance policies (Duh – The next step after being allowed to surf on a laptop all class is deciding not to attend the class at all. So the professor, to avoid speaking to an empty room, must force people to attend.), and about lecture halls and seminar rooms full of people resentfully, flagrantly, ignoring them.

So here’s the latest student protest – a woman at Indiana University. She notes increasing numbers of professors “making attendance an important part of the grade,” and shudders at the thought of all the online flunkies who would have stayed home now showing up and being in-class online flunkies. The problem as it stands is bad enough:

No matter how hard you’re trying to pay attention to the professor, if the person in front of you is on Facebook or Popeater or Tetris, your attention is going to be drawn to whatever he or she is doing.

Quite frankly, it’s rude. If you’re not interested in paying attention during class, don’t come. You’re a distraction for the rest of us, and you’re probably annoying the professor.

She argues for what they’ve done at the University of Chicago law school: Disabling the internet in classrooms. But she also notes that this won’t stop her fellow students from playing distracting off-line games… And I can tell you, from the professor’s point of view, that as long as there’s a vertical screen between you and the student’s face, the same problem of total non-interaction pertains.

Yet another student – this one at Iowa State – gets it.

An administrator at Lehigh discusses laptops in class.

“It all depends on what the teacher is trying to accomplish,” [Greg] Reihman said. “Some faculty members want increased attention in front of the room so if the presence of laptops becomes a distraction, I understand the banning of them.”

[T]he professors urging us to put away our laptops in favor of pens and notebooks may have a legitimate concern. After all, we go to college to learn from our professors; perhaps we should eliminate the monitor screen standing in the way.

Every class is an online class.

… [During one class, a student] was playing ESPN College Town, an Internet-based game in which one creates a fictional college and maintains it a la Farmville. Essentially I observed this student playing a game that simulates the college experience, while in a college classroom, participating in the college experience.

… As budget cuts force universities to begin looking for ways to save money, one of the most popular methods seems to be an increase in the number of online classes offered. While some may argue that online classes detract from a student’s ability to absorb the material, most students that attend large universities understand that for many students, whether it has an official designation or not, almost every class is an online class. This is because large lecture halls seem better fit for LAN parties than learning experiences based on the number of students who surf the web during class….

… honest.

*********************

Update: The University of Hartford newspaper seems to be offline at the moment.

… attacks laptop use in class.

Courtesy of Professor Angst.

“I honestly don’t think it was any worse than any of my other classes. I’m sure they were browsing Facebook during class, but they did that before with laptops and smartphones. There are a lot of professors who would disagree with me on this,” [Angst] added, “but I believe we’re in a multi-tasking world and we need to figure out how to listen and do these things at the same time.”

Can’t argue with that sort of success.

And most of it’s coming from students, not professors.

From Central Michigan Life:

“We as professors need to be flexible with electronic usage i[n] the classroom,” [Central Michigan University journalism professor Mary Pat Lichtman] said. “But there needs to be cooperation from the students.”

Lichtman said college should be treated as a job with professors as students’ employers, and added that if students wouldn’t text in a meeting they shouldn’t do it in the classroom either.

A Dartmouth student writes about the postmodern classroom.